This invention relates to a process for creating colored baits for the purpose of attracting and catching fish.
It has been known in the art of fishing that various colors, especially bright or florescent colors, are selectively attractive to desirable fish species, and that lures or baits which have been colored tend to be selectively attractive to desirbale fish species and increase the probability of catching fish.
The process of attracting fish by means of color added to baits is not a simple one. Color occurs in nature, and color vision is used by predatory species such as game fish, both as a method of identifying desirable food as well as a method of identifying undesirable or poisonous prey. Thus, it is overly simplistic to say that baits with colors having high visibility in water, such as yellow or orange, are always the most desirable or most readily selected baits.
As a single example, the monarch butterfly, showing a bright orange color vividly outlined in black, is a toxic species due to its habit of laying its eggs upon and eating milkweed. While an orange colored lure in most fresh water environments would tend to resemble crawfish, a desirable prey species, and thus would be attractive, in certain environments shallow water fish which are exposed to such dangerous prey may avoid yellows and oranges in favor of alternate colors.
Thus, while in general orange, yellow, and red lures tend to be most effective, there are occasions where lures of less obvious colorations such as blue or green may be most effective.
It is equally known that it is often advantageous that a lure be a specular color, having a high reflectance such as may be provided by silver highlights. However, a specular highlight can also mask a bait or prey, making it less obvious, by matching the reflective properties of rippled or disturbed water.
For this reason, while it is know that baits and lures may be more advantageously used if they display colors, a practical coloration method requires the ability to produce baits having a wide choice of color and having both specular and non-specular reflective characteristics.
Known prior art methods of dying baits involve the use of immersion into or injection under pressure of a toxic dye, suitable only for dead baits and artificial lures.
Prior art U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,489,981 and 3,545,404 disclose a method of dying live worms which involves raising the worms in a specially treated worm culture medium for a period of in excess of one week. The method, as disclosed, is suitable only for worms or for other bait that can be raised in a worm culture medium.
The known methods for coloring live baits are typically shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,486,460 in which an external physical coating is placed upon a live bait. This patent reveals the extreme difficulty of applying a coating to a live bait which is not toxic to the bait and which does not almost immediately wash off. In an analogous manner U.S. Pat. No. 4,202,905 teaches a method of applying luminous bacteria within a gel to the outer surface of a live bait in order to increase the attractiveness of the bait.